Tulsa Topics

Nice work. Really do appreciate your efforts. However, you may wish to check your PDF file again. Seems the highlighting actually ended up covering the items from view.

The entire Agenda can be viewed at http://www.cityoftulsa.org/Agendas/agendax.asp?FN=S53F_CR$&num=1

Was kind of wondering how you achieved the PDF version of this in the first place. If you transcribed it from the scanned standard the City uses, brovo to you.

I'd like to suggest the City Council take up the subject of how these files are posted to the City's website. Seems a resolution requiring a PDF file would be beneficial all the way around. And, while we're on it, another to actually require posting to the website under the same time constraints as the "official" bulletin board in the parking garage of the City Plaza would better assure proper distribution.

BTW, the red note at the top of the Agenda declaring "NOTICE: Documentation is subject to change until time of meeting." is not valid. Complete Agendas are required to be posted 24hrs prior to any meeting or action on any Agenda item. Minor corrections or typos, perhaps, but not adding new items, or substantial revision of existing items would be legal. Even Alan Jackere couldn't find a way around that.

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Another item of interest is the 3:00pm Budget Committee meeting
http://www.cityoftulsa.org/Agendas/agendax.asp?FN=Z6KCMQK_&num=1

I'd like to note again how INCOG is treated as an integral department of the City of Tulsa even though it is not, rather an external, voluntary member supported agency of the City. INCOG is the core of Tulsa's 'regionalism' issues. It'd be interesting to see the City's contribution to their INCOG membership, especially in relation to other member organizations such as the Cities of Owasso, Broken Arrow, Jenks and Bixby.

XonOff,

I appreciate your input about the PDF file, but I'm at a lose about the highlighting covering up the items issue your experiencing. I have checked the PDF file with both Adobe Reader 6.0 and 7.0 and they look just like I saved them. I wonder if there's some settings in Acrobat Reader that would be covering up the items on your end of things.

I don't transcribe the agenda. If that was the case you wouldn't see it posted by me anyway.

I actually search the agenda at the Council's website here:

Tulsa Council Agenda Search Wizard

and then print the results to the PDF.

I agree on your suggestions about the use of PDF's and posting the notices.

One of my peeves about how the city uses PDF formats is how everything appears to be scanned in as an image vs. just printing in document form. If the city did the later it would be faster, take up less space on the server, and allow the text to easily be copied, pasted and search able.

Maybe that's the reason, hard to copy and search.

Again, thanks for your comment and I'll try and investigate the problem more in depth.

If anyone else is having difficulties with viewing the PDF formats posted here, please leave a comment or send an email to Tulsa Topics via:

Email Tulsa Topics

Thanks for the efforts.
Appears the solid highlighting occurs only in Adobe Version 5.0. It shows see-through as intended on my Version 6.0

I use v5.0 whenever I can since it's much smaller and I have the full version of it, not just the reader.

You said: "One of my peeves about how the city uses PDF formats is how everything appears to be scanned in as an image vs. just printing in document form. If the city did the later it would be faster, take up less space on the server, and allow the text to easily be copied, pasted and search able."

I agree completely. Rather than scanning at all, the person with that piece of paper needs to move up to the person who typed it for the file in PDF. A scanned image as a PDF is just as worthless.

Hopefully, it wasn't originally typed on an IBM Selectric (i.e., "typewriter" if there are still people around who know what one is. Hey, it was electric.)

I really have the impression it is currently being done the way it is to explicitely be difficult.

While I'm here...
Could someone provide a "for Dummies" version of what a "Tax Increment Financing District" is and how it works and/or benefits us/whom?

Here's a pretty good FAQ from Illinois on TIF Districts. I'm not real current on the issue, but when I get my arms around it, I'll post something here at Tulsa Topics.
TIF District FAQ from Illinois

Thanks for the link to the Illinois FAQ. Seems most, if not all, specs would apply to our local version. And, that leads to what got me wondering in the first place. It was just a gut feeling. But, now seems the application of a TIF for the area proposed, a fairly large new development in a relatively undeveloped area along a newly expanded and improved major highway interchange, fails the "but for" test described in the FAQ.

They are primarily intended to serve as a mechanism for RE-development of blighted areas, not so much for new development in preveously undeveloped areas.

I'll have to study more to understand why our leaders feel they need to be doing this at that location.

So, I've learned something. Thanks for the link.

Bobby, I've just caught wind about some ways that TIFs can work. I have a secret that you all will find out about next week!! I also want to thank XonOFF for his 2 cents. That helped me, too! Man, oh, Man. What a deal, what a deal....Thanks a $Million!!